So you have officially declared “we are a lean company”.  In a nutshell, this means that you have set your business off in the direction of continuous improvement through the elimination of waste. In the beginning this is quite easy to do, there are labels to be printed, old messes to get cleaned up, shadow […]

If you’re the owner of a manufacturing business. You have probably been the last one out of the shop and as you’re turning off the lights and shutting everything down, you see your finished product sitting by the shipping door. You look at it and think to yourself, “it’s five pieces of wood put together […]

At the heart of lean manufacturing, it’s all about eliminating waste through continuous improvement. So this means we should be looking at every single process, every single day with an eye for making it better. A great guideline is to work towards making everything easier, better, faster, cheaper. And in that order. But there is […]

I would be willing to bet if I asked you to head into the shop on a Saturday afternoon and build me one or two of the things your factory produces whether it be cabinets, furniture, or custom millwork, what you make doesn’t really matter.  And probably just the thought of going in with no […]

You wouldn’t have to study lean manufacturing very long before you came across the word Gemba. Japanese phrases are very common in the lean world mostly because Lean has been popularized by Toyota in the Toyota production system which originated in Japan. Gemba is simply where the work happens. To find the actual Gemba, you […]

Ever wonder why your business isn’t doing as well as it should? I don’t think it’s possible to be responsible for any business department or work cell and not have the question why come up at least a few times a day. why did that machine break? Why won’t people listen to me? Why aren’t we […]

For anyone who is working, I think it’s probably safe to say we are always on the lookout for a book and article or even some sage words that are going to help us do our job easier, better, faster, cheaper. (And if you’re clever, in that order) There are so many management philosophies I […]

There are inherent sequences built into our world. And it seems to me that when things are done out of the sequence we all look at it and say that’s ridiculous [see video]. But the phenomenon noted here only applies when the sequence flat out fails if it’s done in the wrong order. If there […]

We all know how critical it is to understand the eight deadly wastes of manufacturing. They are: Transportation Inventory Motion Waiting Overprocessing Overproduction Defects Unused employee creativity In a nut shell, all the bad things that happen in our factories fall into one of these categories. Believe it or not, all eight of these are […]

If you have a shop with more than one person in it i’m willing to bet there isn’t more than a four hour stretch where you don’t see a mistake happening, find a mistake that happened, or find yourself making a mistake. Typically, when mistakes are mentioned to the poor person who made it, the […]